In recent weeks, South Africa has seen some of its worst violence
since the apartheid era.
They must know that if they shit with us,
they will get it.
Fueled by inequality, the pandemic, and the arrest of a former president,
protests and looting erupted across the country.
I’m looting because we apply for jobs;
they don’t give us jobs.
We try and go to offices, try a strike;
it doesn’t even work.
Over 330 people have died across South Africa
after a week of violence...
Don’t waste your ammo.
in a country where half the population
live below the poverty line.
Everything, our whole life... everything is just gone.
They’ve burnt everything.
It’s just absolutely devastating. What happens here?
How long are we going to take to get back onto our feet?
As Durban descended into lawlessness,
vigilante groups formed to protect private property.
You guys, we can’t live like this.
This thing has to end.
Amidst the carnage, the scars of apartheid reappeared...
with many left helpless by South Africa’s failing economy
and corrupt government.
It’s not about race or anything.
It’s not about race.
This is the inside account
of a week that brought the Rainbow Nation to its knees.
We are in hell.
We must think on how to escape from it.
[South Africa Unrest]
It was ready for shipment to the UK.
We’re emigrating at the end of the month.
And we’ve arrived on site on Tuesday to assess damage,
and we’ve been here ever since.
Probably a shoemaker in there.
After days of unrest and looting,
residents of Durban assess the damage to a storage facility.
Well, it started out “politically.”
But then after that, people just...
did it stupidly, like, honestly.
Honestly.
Because you can’t say it’s politics.
This is not politically affiliated to nobody here.
Just trying to make sense of it all.
You know, that whole unit,
all our albums, all our photo albums,
all our kids’ history, the drawings, the paintings.
Why couldn’t they just take the stuff and just be done?
Why did they have to burn all my memories,
all my children’s photographs?
Everything is gone.
Across the week, $1.4 billion worth of damage
was caused across the country.
Black people own shit here,
so why would it be political?
No, it’s not.
It’s just people just fucking around,
simple as that.
Simple as that.
So yeah, this is what we’re left with.
It’s...
it’s quite devastating.
Now we’ve got to deal with everything that’s going to happen.
Stores getting closed, food shortages.
We’ve been shopping throughout the day.
The queue has been long,
so it’s going to get worse.
On the 9th of July, protests erupted after former President Jacob Zuma
was sentenced to jail for refusing to stand trial on corruption charges.
The protest descended into days of widespread rioting and looting,
with many motivated by hunger and unemployment over politics.
Today, South Africa is witnessing
what some of us who have been warning the so-called politicians
about the reality that whatever they are doing to the poor
will meet them in the future.
About 12.8 million people are unemployed.
During the violence, people lost their lives and their livelihoods.
The police struggled to deal with the scale of the unrest.
I left my kids for this nonsense!
Durban residents like trauma doctor Kevin Nitu
have dealt with smaller scale unrest before.
The community even has their own riot vehicle,
but they’ve not seen anything like this before.
This is the current situation in South Africa,
and it’s a bleak situation.
We have been manning this area
for the last three days and three nights
in order to protect our residents from any further looting,
any further violence against them,
and any damages to property and life.
We’ve been here...
some of us have been sleeping only two hours, an hour,
coming back, taking turns to go and rest and come back.
Many in Durban formed armed community protection groups.
I need to know by a show of hands who’s carrying.
Who’s carrying?
How many
No hitting of vehicles,
No antagonizing these
Please, no shooting
or pellet guns for nothing.
Right, they come here, that’s fine;
we are going to defend our neighborhood.
But otherwise, we’re not going to do anything.
Shop owners operating in a business park
banded together to repel any looters.
So let’s try and keep it at that.
I know there’s lot of people that are angry.
There’s angry people on the outside, too.
You’re not... you’re not here to pick a fight.
You’re here to stop one.
President Ramaphosa urged citizens to return to their homes,
but many refused.
But if they come here, but if they come here at us...
That’s not antagonizing. That’s--
we’re going to take them.
Across this line, this is our fucking--
Listen, you’ve got to stop that right here.
What the fuck are you doing this side?
That’s your... that’s looting, that’s all free, go there.
OK, copy. I’ll be monitoring throughout the night.
If you get anything, just give me a call,
and I’ll make my way out.
These private security guards worked around the clock
during the week’s deadly unrest.
It was just unlucky, you know what it was.
We had quite a rough, rough time.
Very little sleep,
looking at about 15 hours’ sleep in the last week.
It’s hard working around the clock, always on standby,
waiting for the next load to hit.
Been chasing
that crazy.
The devastation caused,
I think a lot of shop owners really felt the pinch.
They got hit the worst.
I think a lot of them will not be able to recover from this.
Being on high alert for the next wave,
as rumors are going around,
it’s also a bit stressful.
Security guards tried to protect shops
and services in the city of Durban
by chasing looters
and dispersing them with rubber bullets.
Shoot those fuckers!
Those without security
had to protect essential services themselves.
What we’re doing at the moment
is we are trying to assist the community.
We’re all business owners, and we are helping out where we can.
We’re one of the first petrol stations to have got fuel in.
All the guards are armed
to ensure that our infrastructure doesn’t get ruined.
We’ve all sacrificed to ensure that we create unity in our community.
As the city’s basic infrastructure broke down,
vital supplies of food, petrol, and medicine were in short supply.
Goods such as baby milk had to be flown in
by a small fleet of volunteer pilots.
Should I put it with the milk?
Yes, please, if you wouldn’t mind.
We understand the plight of the people of KZN.
And the small contribution we can do...
we’re definitely willing to assist.
Despite the looting and violence,
Durban community began to clean up the city.
Like, it’s hard to fathom how much destruction took place in Durban
over the last two, three days.
But coming here to the LG factory shop...
you’re lost for words
because not only was it torched, looted,
but the stuff... the stuff wasn’t even taken.
It was just destroyed.
And just left here.
We have to make sure
that we build a country where this never happens again.
We have to make our people feel secure in this country,
that they never feel so disinvested that they can just destroy.
For some, the community response
cannot hide the root cause of the unrest.
We need not to look back.
We need to look forward for the sake of the next generation.
Yes, we have seen it that apartheid is not yet gone.
We’ve seen it that the humanistic side of apartheid
is still entrenched in our communities.
How do we honestly restructure and redefine South Africa
so that this South Africa can be an inclusive one
where a black person and a white person
and an Indian person can interact at night
and feel secure that I am meeting my fellow South African?
Unless the poverty and inequality in South Africa is addressed,
the violence of this week may return.
Part of the problem we have
is that we’ve built our country and our city excluding people.
And in some ways this is an opportunity for us
to rebuild a country that includes all South Africans.
We are determined to do it.
We are going to do it.
We will get this done.